In commercial and industrial environments where professional floor cleaning equipment is used, excessive cleaning is rarely a good thing. In particular, the use of overly aggressive floor scrubber brushes can cause costly damage to sensitive floor types in as little as one cleaning pass. This makes selecting the right floor cleaning brushes a matter of compatibility with the floor itself. In this way, the ideal floor cleaner brush is that which provides the least viable amount of cleaning action (not the most) in order to avoid causing damage to the floor while still providing effective cleaning power.
For example, nearly all floor scrubber machines are provided with medium grit, moderately abrasive polypropylene brushes from the factory. These brushes are great on typical concrete floors, but are too abrasive for use on resinous coated floors (i.e., epoxy floors). Over time, the standard brushes will physically wear into the layers of the floor coating, causing scratches, cracks, fractures, and eventually, pocket failures. Repairing this damage is costly and takes time, which could have all been avoided if a softer, more appropriate brush had been selected to begin with.
Floor scrubber brushes are available in the following materials, ordered from least to most aggressive:
Natural Fibers – as the softest common bristle material available, natural fiber brushes are best used for the most sensitive flooring types. While gentle, natural fiber brushes are considered to provide more of a buffing action than scrubbing, they also tend to wear quickly relative to other material options.
Nylon – synthetic nylon brushes provide gentle cleaning for sensitive flooring types while offering heightened durability and scrubbing force. Though nylon is more expensive than polypropylene, it offers a longer lifespan in normal applications.
Polypropylene – polypropylene is the de facto standard brush material selection for routine applications. Polypropylene offers a good mix of durability, all-around applicability, and attractive cost, but is not ideal for very sensitive or very aggressive scrubbing needs.
Carbide Grit Nylon – serving moderately challenging applications where increasingly forceful scrubbing is needed, these brushes are made of nylon bristles treated with silicon carbide coatings containing varying abrasive grit particulates. Carbide grit nylon brushes are intended to remove adhered soils from the floors they clean, and are rated from extreme duty (46 grit) to fine polishing duty (500 grit) roughness levels.
Metallic Wire – as the most impactful brush type, metallic wire brushes are best used for intentional scarifying, stripping, and scraping actions to remove heavily embedded soils from floor surfaces. Wire brushes will certainly leave behind floor scratches, metal particulates, and broken wire bristles, making them most often used in heavy industrial and outdoor environments.
Common Industrial Floor Finishes and Their Ideal Brush Selections
Next, we’ll list out the most frequently installed floor finishes that industrial floor cleaning equipment serves, along with their ideal brush pairings:
- Smooth Concrete – as the most common floor finish found in industrial warehouse spaces, smooth troweled concrete offers a very consistent, low roughness surface that is great for everyday vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Smooth concrete is best paired with medium abrasion floor scrubber brushes, standard polypropylene brushes that won’t etch or scarify its surface.
- Highly Finished Concrete – smooth concrete can be further finished to produce high-sheen, glossy, aesthetically pleasing surfaces through mechanical polishing and clear sealant coating. These finishes are best cleaned with light-duty, soft polypropylene brushes of smaller bristle diameters (usually under 0.20″) or soft nylon brushes.
- Rough Concrete – typically used in wet, outdoor, and other heavy-duty environments, rough concrete types include broom, exposed aggregate, and textured finishes. To clean these surfaces, aggressive brushes made of thick, stiff polypropylene or grit-coated nylon bristles are typically chosen. For heavy soils that must be stripped away, wire brushes are an even more impactful option.
- Stained / Painted Concrete – concrete that has an applied stain or paint coating is relatively sensitive to aggressive cleaning, specifically where hard bristles can scratch and scour away the coating’s surface. To avoid these issues, soft polypropylene or soft nylon floor scrubber brushes are the right choice.
- Resinous Coated Concrete – resin-based concrete floor coatings provide unmatched resilience and wear life, but they are sensitive to damage caused by long-term mechanical scrubbing. Epoxy and urethane coatings with gritted topcoats are especially vulnerable to brush wear, making soft-to-medium polypropylene floor scrubber brushes best suited for the job.
- Marble, Granite, Ceramics, and Stone – floor materials in the stone family can be highly susceptible to scratches and discoloration when roughly abrased, calling for soft-to-medium plain polypropylene brushes or up to medium grit-coated polypropylene brushes. With ceramic tiles, brushes must also be selected to not damage grout and joint fills.
- Resilient Coverings – floor coverings that do not fit into any of the above categories are bundled together into a category known as resilient coverings, which includes vinyl, linoleum, rubber, cork, and specialty composite materials. Resilient coverings are best cleaned with soft to medium natural fibers, nylon, and polypropylene brushes.
Additional Considerations for Ensuring Excellent Long-Term Floor Cleaning
From the above section, readers can clearly see that different floor types call for different brush materials in order to protect floor surfaces from damage and premature wear. Aside from brush selection alone, here are a few more tips that can help ensure long-term floor integrity when using industrial floor cleaning machines:
- Specifying Floor Finishes with Cleaning in Mind – the absolute best way to guarantee compatibility between a floor cleaning solution and the floors installed in a facility is to engineer and specify the ideal combination from the beginning. Equipment selections, brush materials, cleaning patterns and frequencies, chemical choices, and even floor maintenance details should all be reviewed and harmonized at the time of designing a floor system.
- Break In Period – new floor scrubber brush bristles are typically the firmest when brand new, and soften during normal use. Operators should always “break in” new brushes by slowing their scrubbing speeds and reducing scrubbing pressures for a short time (usually 1-2 weeks) to fully protect their floors.
- Brush Dimensions – in many cases, buyers can select non-standard brush diameters and heights when replacing their brushes, which can have varying effects on their floor’s integrity. Larger diameter brushes can cover more floor area with fewer overlapping travel paths, and taller brushes (especially those with angled bristles) are gentler on floors, both of which reduce floor wear.
- Brush Pressure & RPM – for industrial floor scrubbers equipped with brush controls, operators should always be mindful of using the lowest brush pressures and RPMs (revolutions per minute) necessary to get the job done. When pressures and speeds are set too high, floor surfaces are subjected to excessive abrasion and friction heat that will more quickly lead to visible wear and potential damage.
- Brush Maintenance – like all industrial equipment, floor scrubbers need consistent maintenance to stay in good working order, and this maintenance extends to brushes as well. All brush types should be thoroughly inspected and cleaned before each shift, checking for physical damage, missing bristle cords, and uneven wear. On multi-brush machines, uneven wear can be particularly combatted by rotating brushes regularly.
- Always Spot Test – industrial floor cleaning is not always an exact science, given how many variables are involved with any given cleaning program. For this reason, we always suggest that new cleaning equipment and brush material selections are spot tested for compatibility with all floor finishes before they are deployed across the whole facility.
We hope that this discussion has been helpful for your commercial material handling and industrial cleaning needs. Fairchild Equipment is the Upper Midwest’s premier Material Handling Equipment and Service resource ready 24/7 to serve your needs in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Northern Illinois, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For more information or to discuss which Warehouse Optimization solution might be best for you, please send our team a message or call us at (844) 432-4724.
